On Black Friday 2016, I picked up a Logitech G900 mouse and a Logitech G810 Orion Spectrum mechanical keyboard. At the time, I only knew about the G810 Orion Spectrum and the G910 Orion Spark; I only found out about the G910 Orion Spectrum, a hybrid between the two, from that post’s comments the next day.

Yes, that's a tube TV.

Fast forward about thirteen months – I wanted a new keyboard for work, so I decided to bring my G810 into the office and pick up the G910 Orion Spectrum for home. It arrived on Wednesday night, so I’ll give my impression from the first two days. I was a bit nervous about bringing the G810 into the office, because, even though it’s a quiet mechanical keyboard, it’s louder than a membrane switch. No-one complained when asked, though, or even acknowledged that it could be an issue – and I share a cubical with another software developer.

The old G810 is getting a promotion to work keyboard.

On to the G910.

First, the wrist mount feels amazing. It’s exactly the correct size, height, and angle for how I type, both two-hand and right-hand-on-WASD (left hand on mouse). It doesn’t really do much when I have my right hand on the arrow keys, but I’ve moved away from playing games like that. (That is a shame, by the way, because the three pods of keys surrounding the arrows help finding the key you want by feel.) I was a bit worried about the angle of the keyboard itself, because the risers don’t move it as high as the G810, but the wrist rest apparently makes all the difference.

Second, the volume roller is quite bad. I’m assuming I have a defective unit, but the amount I roll it doesn’t actually correspond to how much it moves. It even jumps to near max or near zero for instants or goes in the wrong direction. My G810 started doing that about a half year after I got it, but this one was out of the box. I really liked the user experience of the control itself, but it just doesn’t work correctly. It seems to get better if I roll slowly and push down on the roller as I move it, but even that’s not perfect.

The new home keyboard.

Third, the WASD keys have a slight texture to them. That might be just the nature of the backlight, because you can feel the transparent bits of every key and the WASD keys have a weird design to them, but it still helps locate them by touch. It feels like a few subtle horizontal lines near the top of the key cap. Otherwise, the keycaps feel almost identical to the G810.

That’s about it for my first impressions. This is not an actual review, like I've done back in 2012, this is just how I feel about it after a couple of days with no real testing. Remember, this is the G910 Orion Spectrum, not the G910 Orion Spark.